Consider It
by Dartxni
Summary: All her life, Jane has been told she was a lesbian. Character Study


Title: Consider It  
Fandom: Rizzoli and Isles  
Pairing: Rizzisles sizzles...Jane/Maura  
Summery: Character study of Jane Rizzoli. All her life, Jane has been told she was a lesbian.  
Rating: T for language  
Beta: purrpickle, but all mistakes are mine.

Jane Rizzoli knows she is not a lesbian. She has been forced to consider it by the sheer amount of people in her life who have considered it for her. The first was most likely her mom when Jane was 16.

"You're not... gay, right?" her mom had asked, and it was obvious that there was only one right answer to a question posed in that kind of tone. Jane hadn't even needed to think about the answer then.

"No. No! Get out of my room!"

But that wasn't the first time, no. The first time was a couple weeks before that. Frankie had gone all quiet and drawn. One day she had found him crying in his bed, loud music drowning the sound of his sobs but not the sight of his tears. He was being bullied at school. Little things: pinches in the classroom, trips in the hallway, and the usual slurs. Homophobic epithets like cocksucker and fudgepacker, and a vicious nickname, Frankie the Faggy. Yesterday he had been pantsed in the boys locker room and no one, not even his 'friends,' had stood up for him. Everyone had laughed.

He was not a fag, he swore to Jane. It was important to him that she believed him. There were some boys who were going to beat him up on the way to school tomorrow. Mom wouldn't believe he was sick, not again. He wanted to kill himself. He confessed it all to Jane. 13 years old, and he wanted to kill himself. 13 years old, and she was already his hero.

Jane walked with Frankie to East Boston Central Catholic School the next day even though it would make her late. The three boys, all of them 8th graders and on a whole other stage of puberty from her brother, had been astonished to see her there. One of them had made a stupid sexual remark, "Suck my dick," or some such macho bullshit. Jane punched him in the nose.

He'd gone down with blood spurting from his nose, out for the count. The other two boys had been on Jane in a second. By the end of the scuffle she had achieved a black eye and broken nose, and both of her knees were skinned. One of the bullies had a dislocated finger and had lost a tooth, and another one had a nasty bite on his hand that required 8 stitches. That was from Frankie, who had leaped in to the brawl without a thought for his own safety, even though he had been terrified the day before. Frankie got out with a sprained ankle from when he had jumped on Jane's assailant's back and been shook off. The crutches he hobbled around on for the next three weeks were a kind of badge of honor. Somehow the story had spread that he had saved his sister from the bullies, not the other way around. Jane wasn't so cruel as to disabuse people of that notion, and Frankie looked up to her even more because of that.

It was when they were a safe distance away and surrounded by two separate contingents of nuns that one of the boys (the one missing a tooth), had called Jane a 'freaking bull dyke.' Jane had done the only conceivable thing. She had spit at him; a big wad of saliva and blood from her nose.

With casual injustice, Jane had gotten the brunt of the punishment. First the Mother Superior (who had known her too well from when she had been a student at the school) scolded her for fighting, even as Jane held the ice pack to her swelling eye socket. Jane had gotten the impression that it was fighting and being a girl at the same time and not the actual fight itself that infuriated her.

Because Jane had thrown the first punch, because she was the oldest at 16, and because she, a high school student, had intentionally gone to a school she no longer attended for the stated intention of getting in a fight (in her rage, she had not considered her fifth amendment right of non-self-incrimination), Jane had ended up with a juvenile record.

Her parole officer had done a great service to her when he had looked at the facts of the case, and seen not a trouble maker and criminal, but a protector. He had gotten her enrolled in Junior Peace Officers of America, a program for high school students that was like ROTC for the Police Force. She was the only girl in her division, but the shocking greens, blues and yellows of her still healing face had been a like a key into the boys club.

When she first joined, she did it mostly because her parole officer told her to. But when she put on that uniform, she thought about what it meant to be there for people. To protect them. She couldn't wait to get the badge to make it real.

The rest was history and probably fate.

Boyfriends she had broken up with in high school had spread rumors that she was gay. Locker room gossip in the police force labeled her a rug-muncher. Her mom, learning progressiveness from her idol, Ellen, had come to her one day and informed her that it was okay if she was a lesbian so long as she wore a dress in the wedding.

But Jane is not a lesbian. She is attracted to men, very attracted to some of them, even. She is just very picky about it. She wants a man who can pick her up and swing her around and make her swoon. A man who can make her feel and want to be beautiful. At the same time she wants a man who won't try to protect her from job, or from herself, and one who won't get mad or jealous if she is better at something than he is. He has to have dark hair, and be taller than her, and be able to carry her around, and be able to pin her down, and not get mad when she pins him down, because she gets competitive sometimes. To be honest, all of the time.

Throughout all the questions, accusations, and suggestions, Jane has always been very firm in her own belief that she is not a lesbian because she still dreams of that perfect man.

But recently, increasingly, she has been dreaming of that perfect woman too. And unlike the vaguely sketched man of her dreams, the woman of her dreams has a face. She smiles gently with crease marks around her mouth that say that smiling and laughing are frequent occurrences for her. She doesn't understand people intuitively but her scientific curiosity is peaked by people and so she tries. Sometimes she fails in humorous ways. She is so beautiful that she makes Jane swoon, and she is strong for Jane when Jane is feeling most weak. She makes Jane feel beautiful and want to be more beautiful for her. When Maura tries to save Jane from herself, Jane finds that she doesn't mind as much, for some reason.

It is a funny thing. With all the people who have ever thought Jane was a lesbian, none at all have ever considered she might be bi.


End file.
